Elections Under Threat. Inec fret over uncolect pvcs Politicians’ threats spread panic, uncertainty PDP, APC trade words over Buhari’s credentials It is exactly 34 days to the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria. Apart from being Valentine’s Day, February 14 is the day when Nigerians will go to the polls to elect a new President, who will lead the country for the next four years. However, the polls are already being threatened by shoddy preparations on the part of the Independent National Electoral Commission. Also hanging over the elections is the likelihood of violence, following threats, accusations and counter-accusations by various candidates, especially of the Peoples Democratic Party and All Progressives Congress. Already, hotels and various businesses, especially in Abuja, Kano, Kaduna, Lafia and Jos, have started shutting down and relocating to other parts of the country, for fear of being caught in any likely outbreak of fighting. School proprietors are also said to be considering shutting down for some weeks in February. Already, there are indications that millions of voters may not be able to exercise their franchise during the elections because up till this moment, they have not being able to obtain their Permanent Voter Card, the instrument that pre -qualifies one to cast one’s ballot. The Independent National Electoral Commission, whose duty it is to conduct the elections, is grappling with several challenges in its preparations for the crucial assignment. Sunday Telegraph gathered that the hiccups in the distribution of PVCs arose from a multiplicity of factors, ranging from the late delivery of the cards by the contractor to INEC’s apparent lack of capacity to undertake the distribution of the cards. Investigations showed that the contract for the production of the cards was awarded to a little known indigenous firm and i’s Chinese technical partners. Under the terms of the contract, the cards ought to have been delivered in the last quarter of 2013 but they started rolling out a year later. Besides being behind schedule by a whole year, the card printing contract also ran into serious technical hitches due to the alleged incompetence of the contractors, manifesting in the wiping out of millions of names that were originally in the voter register. Eligible Voters and PVCs shortage Before now, INEC had announced that it had about 87 million voters on its register. But by August last year, the figure were reviewed downwards as the commission noted that a total of 70,383,427 registered voters were on its database after its Automated Finger Identification System screening operations. However, provisional figures released by the commission’s Voter Registry Department on January 7, showed that INEC had received a total of 54,341,610 PVCs and distributed 38,774,219 nationwide. This left a balance of 15,567,219 cards yet to be collected. The percentage of PVCs distributed nationwide by the commission as at January 7, 2015 is 71.35 per cent. In other words, over 15 million voters have yet to collect their cards. This figure emerged from the list of “balance of Permanent Voter Cards” released by the commission on January 7. Out of the 70,383,427 registered voters on the commission’s database, it printed only 54,341,610 PVCs. State by state distribution of the PVCs shows that only 2,159,091 or 53.98 per cent out of over four million PVCs were distributed in Lagos State, leaving out 1,840,909 eligible voters yet to collect their PVCs. In Rivers State, only 1,253,606 cards representing 64.06 per cent were distributed out of a total 1,956,983 registered voters while 703,377 voters are still waiting to collect their PVCs. In Kano State, out of a total 3,198,859 PVC only 2,771, 185 or 59.64 PVC were distributed, leaving out 427,674 PVCs yet to be distributed. Mostly affected is Anambra State, where only 862,747 or 51.81 per cent were successfully distributed, with 802,595 PVCs yet to be collected. The state has a total of 1,665,342 registered voters. Oyo State has a total of 1,985,370 registered voters out of which 1,141,405 or 57.49 voters have collected their PVCs while 843,965 have yet to be distributed. The distribution figures for Borno and other states in the emergency areas remain unknown. PDP urges INEC to disqualify Buhari Peoples Democratic Party yesterday urged the Independent National Electoral Commission to disqualify the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, for failing to present his academic credentials. The Director, Media and Publicity of PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, at a press conference in Abuja also accused INEC of engaging in anti-democratic acts. Fani-Kayode observed that the inability of Buhari to present “even the minimum requirement of just a leaving school certificate questions his moral and other credentials for pursuing the position of the president of Nigeria.” He questioned the qualifications Buhari presented when he was recruited into the military, and later rose to the rank of a General in the Nigerian army. “Academic qualification is a threshold issue that cannot be waived for any citizen no matter how highly placed and irrespective of whichever region such individual comes from except as provided by the constitution,” Fani-Kayode stated. According to him, Section 131 of the constitution provides that anybody wishing to contest for the office of the President, apart from being a citizen of Nigeria by birth and being sponsored by a political party, shall be “educated up to at least school certificate level or its equivalent. “It is to be noted that section 131 (d) is a specific directional order for all candidates to show proof of education up to a minimum standard not below school certificate or its equivalent. “But from what INEC has published, Buhari has not submitted any personal particulars of minimum school leaving certificate for the 2015 election. Shockingly, from INEC documents displayed in all constituencies, he also did not submit anything in 2011 and never referred the electoral umpire then to the Secretary of the Military Board as well as previous elections he contested as evidenced in all available INEC records until this current discovery. “If the constitution did not require proof, it would not specify a minimum,” Fani-Kayode further argued. He added that Buhari, who claimed to be a man of integrity has not been true to Nigerians, stating that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a false deponent was declared in the affidavit he swore where he indicated that all his documents are with the Secretary of the Military Board. He also noted that the military board, like any other bodies, does not keep or retain original copies of personal particulars of individuals such as birth certificates, passports, and academic credentials. Fani-Kayode said, ““INEC erred in law by publishing the name of a candidate without receiving the personal particulars of the candidate within seven days of receiving his nomination forms as indicated in section 31(3). “This is indeed a tragedy; illustrating what Nigeria has become, that an individual is so powerful that the law has to be ignored to accommodate him.” Fani-Kayode vowed that PDP would petition against Buhari’s qualification at the ‘appropriate time.’ APC fires back However, the APC Presidential Campaign has challenged PDP to ask President Goodluck Jonathan to address the nation on the massacre in Baga town; which Amnesty International has described as the single most deadly incident since the unfortunate insurgency started in the country. A statement from the Directorate of Media and Publicity of the APC presidential campaign yesterday said the PDP had dwelt so much on the issue of Buhari’s academic certificates to the detriment of other matters. “This government should not go on being insensitive. They have to account to Nigerians. The issue of certificate of General Buhari is a non-issue as everyone knows that Buhari is a product of Daura Primary School, Katsina Provisional Secondary School (now Government College, Katsina) and the Nigerian Military Training College. This is in addition to several other courses he attended at home and abroad,” it said. The statement said further that while the PDP government has failed in its duty and responsibilities to the citizens and the nation, it had intensified effort to pull wool over the eyes of Nigerians. “A leading member of the party, Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State, a few days ago, informed Nigerians that in politics, you must tell lies. Nigerians should take their cue from there. “Unfortunately, PDP has become a political party that is so fixated with keeping an incompetent government in power and is lustfully engaged in pursuing a non-issue about an individual’s academic qualifications,” the statement concluded. Insecurity and IDPs Apart from the millions of eligible voters that will be disenfranchised through the discrepancies in the production and distribution of the PVCs, many more are likely to be excluded from the electoral process owing to the insurgency and general insecurity in parts of the country. Thousands of families have been forced to flee their homes in areas affected by the insurgency to seek refuge in other parts of the country. Many of these internally displaced persons are currently living in camps far away from their homes. No fewer than two million IDPs are currently in Chad, Cameroon and Niger. For those of them that are eighteen years and above and were registered voters before the insurgency in the North-East began, it will be double jeopardy – they’ve lost all their material possessions to Boko Haram and they would also lose their franchise. There are over half a million IDPs in the Federal Capital Territory alone and there are thousands of others scattered across other states in the country. Unless the rules are changed and INEC creates special polling units for them at their current locations within the country, the IDPs would merely watch their more privileged compatriots go to the polls. The absence of a law on Diaspora voting means the IDPs domiciled outside the country are automatically excluded. No fewer than 3,000 Nigerians have fled their homes from Borno and Yobe to Chad since mid-December following incessant attacks by Boko Haram insurgents around the Lake Chad region. Chadian Prime Minister, Kalzeubé Pahimi Deubet, told diplomats and representatives of international partners in the capital, N’Djamena, last Wednesday that the attacks had also forced 500 Chadians to return home from Nigeria’s volatile North-East, Al Wihda newspaper reports. Outgoing REC in Ad-amawa State, Kassim Gana Gaidam, has meanwhile said the commission will ensure that IDPs in the state participate in the election. Speaking in Yola while handing over, Gaidam noted that the task force on IDPs had made recommendations, which include options to enable IDPs in the affected council areas to vote in the elections. “The various options recommended included the designation of safe havens as a constituency due to the legal requirements of constituency and residency voting. These options are subject to security cover. Also, establishment of voting centres for IDPs to vote as if they are in their original constituencies using the same voter register and all other infrastructure for voting as in normal local governments,” Gaidam said. Threats of violence Though the challenge of terrorism and insurgency is partly fuelled by ethno-religious and political diversities in Nigeria, the political elite in the country do not seem to have learnt any lessons. In the build up to the election, political parties, actors and their supporters are getting desperate and the result has been a volley of threats, mudslinging and hate speeches hauled at one another. There has been no love lost between PDP and APC as both parties mobilise for the epic battle. Both parties have accused each other of planning to rig the elections and have warned against the consequences of such an action. In the course of the electioneering, the APC has threatened that it will form a parallel government if it loses the election on account of manipulation of the votes by the ruling party. In response, the PDP has warned the opposition against the consequences of seeking to get into power by force. According to the ruling party, any attempt to form a parallel government would not only be tantamount to treason but an invitation to chaos and anarchy in the country. In addition to the hardline positions of the two main political parties, their supporters and opinion leaders have also been stoking the fire of electoral violence from their respective abodes. From the threats of mayhem by Dr. Junaid Mohammed, a northern politician to the counter threats by the leader of the defunct Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Mujaheed Asari Dokubo, the atmosphere has become so charged that some Nigerians have started moving back to their places of origin for fears that the forthcoming elections might be bloody. The Exodus Though President Goodluck Jonathan has assured that his government will provide adequate security and guarantee free , fair and credible elections, there is still palpable fear among the citizens. Sunday Telegraph gathered that many people who travelled to their hometowns to celebrate the Christmas and New Year in their states of origin have yet to return while many of those who returned did so without their families. Findings by our correspondents across Northern states revealed that many Nigerians from the southern parts of the country who did not travel home during the festive periods are already heading home with their families and belongings over what they called ‘fear of the unknown.’ Also, some members of the elite class are relocating their families to Dubai, security sources said. A resident of the FCT, who spoke to Sunday Telegraph on condition of anonymity, said he had already sent his entire family to his home state because of fears over the likely outcome of the presidential election. According to him, nobody knows what will happen if either Jonathan or APC candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, wins. This atmosphere of fear is becoming manifest across the nation’s capital as commercial activities have yet to fully resume, one week after the Yuletide. A similar situation has been observed in Kano, Kaduna, Lafia and other major cities in the North. Mr Ray Ugba Morphy, a hotelier in Lafia, Nasarawa State has already closed down his business and relocated to his hometown, Ogoja, in Cross River State. In a message titled ‘Closing Day’ posted on his Facebook page, Morphy captured the scenario thus: “Today, I announce the official closure of our cottage hotel in Lafia! Three trailers are at this moment moving all equipment out of Lafia and Nasarawa State. Despite my personal friendship with Al Makura, the governor of that state, I have no choice but to take this painful decision! At the end of the 2015 elections, I will decide what to do. For now, it is safer to close and move out because in all the crisis we have witnessed in Lafia in the recent past, at no time did the security operatives ever respond to our distress calls. “Despite our proximity to Lafia Local Govt secretariat, my staff still feel very unsafe and I will not endanger anyone’s life for my business or for political correctness! Whenever there is an uproar or riot in Lafia which is pretty often, It has always been, every man to himself and since I am neither an Eggon nor am I a Gambari, it is clear that my best choice is to move out!” New Telegraph.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 17:51:39 +0000
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